Is the Convergence Market Over-Saturated?

Matthew Nickasch — Thu, 29 May 2008 21:42:42 -0400

There is never an end to the ongoing slew of vendor news and product announcements to keep up with. What does this mean? Innovation, of course! There isn't a day that goes by where I don't spend a few minutes at the end of the day to keep tabs on new products and offerings. As a systems integrator and architect, nothing can lower my blood pressure at the end of the workday other than discovering what new technologies are aimed at making my work life easier. However, with this, comes volume. Now, we're concerned about market "over-saturation", where there are simply too many products and solutions for a single market. This poses an interesting question: Is The Convergence Market Over-Saturated?

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Appliances Run Amok!

Matthew Nickasch — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:09:52 -0500

The market for Asterisk-based IP-PBX appliances has grown significantly in the last three years. We're seeing appliance-type systems from all sorts of large and small vendors alike. From Digium's Asterisk Appliance, to the Trixbox Appliance, Fonality's PBXtra, the Switchvox appliance... the list goes on and on. Each device has a custom-developed GUI that usually all ties back to the same Asterisk code on the backend. What these appliances do provide however, is usually a support contract or point-of-contact in case things go horribly wrong.

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